Ora has the beliefs, etiquette, taste, values, goals you mention. A central set of ideas is important for people to gather around. What are trekies without Star Trek? I am ashamed to admit, I don't know what this thing people gather around is for Ora, can you enlighten?
I must admit that I don't fully understand the 'thing' that ORA'farians are gathering around either
I'm not sure what ORA is yet, but I can outline some key elements that are important to me.
If I continue my analogy of music promotion again, I'm trying to help create the biggest coolest 'gig' I can, and I know it's going to be a 'rock' concert, but I still don't know who's going to play on stage yet, so I can only describe the 'music' in a general sense, but I know the common elements needed for a great show (lights, sound equipment, stage, audience etc), so I'll start working on the things I can do something about now, and try and get as much help from other like minded people as I can.
There is a big 'chicken & egg' problem here - to get a great "band" I need to put on a BIG show worthy of their talent, but to organise things like a stadium venue and sell advanced tickets, I need to have a big name "band" already signed up, and I'm just a little unknown guy, so who's going to let me book their enormo-dome stadium? That's the problem the Woodstock guys had, and ORA is in a similar situation now. We want to create a 'dream team' of developers and community activists all focused on achieving a common goal, and with shared core values, but we do have a 'chicken & egg' problem in attracting people to join ORA when we still don't know what ORA exactly is yet!
I'm trying to consciously learn from all the other coin projects I know of to try and synthesis together the key ingredients needed for a successful coin, and I want to participate, even though I'm not a developer, and I want others to participate too, even if they're not a dev either.
These are some things about ORA that are important to me!
Starfish communityORA has no leader, so it isn't dependent on any single person, or even a small number of people. In practice we are very early in our development, and the number of people actively engaged now is very small (around 6), so if somebody dropped out now from the core group it would make things difficult, but I think ORA would continue to exist. I don't expect that to happen, and anybody is free to join ORA at any time.
When I say 'core group' I mean the group of people who freely decided they liked what I was saying, and they either contacted me and offered to help, or they responded positively when I asked them to help me with a particular task. One of the key features to a decentralised community is people self-select for tasks, so at the beginning things happen slowly, because there's nobody in charge. Human's are almost hardwired to work in hierarchies, so we almost wait to be told what to do. That slowly changes as things happen around us, and we get inspired by the actions of those around us, and momentum builds.
Speaking for myself, the decentralised aspect of ORA community is the most important feature. If I had to drop out ORA would go on, if nio had to drop out ORA would go on, if Mac Red or Darkhorse or fragORA or Pentamon had to drop out ORA would go on. That's my primary objective as the catalyst. That also means ANYONE can join ORA! You don't need to ask for permission, and nobody can tell you what to do. That means things happen slowly at the start, but as time goes on I suspect ORA output will grow and grow, and momentum will build, and eventually our development cycle will explode, but at the moment we're a tortoise, or a little seed under the ground
ORA distribution and community processes must be based on fair principlesSome get very hung up when someone talks about 'fairness' in regards to coin distribution. Yes, 7 billion people on our planet and ORA had a FREE distribution to ~800 people, how can that be fair? What about all the people who missed out? Very good points, but that doesn't mean ORA can't strive to have fair processes.
IMO fairness is NOT about giving everyone the same sized stake, it's more about fair processes, being transparent, giving everyone an opportunity to join in and contribute, not being exclusive. Sometimes it's impossible to define 'fairness' before the fact, but most reasonable people can spot 'unfairness' when they see it. Fairness is also about being flexible enough to take on board constructive criticism and adjust things if needed.
I happen to think fairness is a key ethical goal to strive for in life, but disregarding that motivation, fairness is a pre-requisite for wider acceptance, and ORA needs to gain acceptance to succeed. If you read the posts of long time bitcoiner Risto Pietila he makes that point often regarding monero. He will accept monero because it had a 'fair' launch, so it will be accepted by the market. I don't think risto is a leftist socialist, so the appeal of monero is not because it's free equal stakes in a giveaway like ORA. Rather, he's an experienced follower of the crypto markets, and Risto knows if something is judged as being 'unfair' it probably wont succeed. Risto and I probably disagree on how to achieve a 'fair' distribution, but I'm confident we would both agree that if the market judges your distribution wasn't 'fair' then your coin wont be accepted. That's why monero and litecoin were accepted, and tenebrix and bytecoin were not. Being 'Fair' is just as much about the head as it is about the heart. Unfairness eventually makes things unworkable.
ORA should be sustainableORA will not be a traditional PoW coin, so we need to find a way to secure the network without mining. I only have suggestions here (how to maximise the number of people running the ORA software) and ultimately nio and the dev team will put together a solution to achieve that. There are many advantages to PoW, but long term I don't think the wider non-crypto community will accept the required 'wasted' electricity and computing resources needed to support a PoW coin network. There are many options ORA can take here, and I think nio is very open to hearing suggestions from other developers. Ultimately we're trying to assemble the best dev team we can, and that's part of the motivation for leaving things open. If you're a developer with suggestions contact nio!!
I'd also like ORA to fit in with the SuperNET eventually if that was possible, as that would help make ORA sustainable, and as the SuperNET is PRO the whole crypto movement, not just a single coin project, that fits in perfectly with what I believe. I am hodling at least 12-15 coins at the moment, and I don't think ORA is trying to become 'the' global mega coin. IMO ORA needs to find a niche, and with 7 billion global population a small crypto niche might end up being something quite large. I don't believe the network effect will create a single dominant coin, so I think anywhere from 20-100 coins could easily co-exist in the future. ORA hasn't found it's killer feature yet, but I'm confident we will, and once we do that'll help us be sustainable. We're definitely open to all suggestions!!
Another key aspect of helping ORA become sustainable is long term funding. We've purposely created a large pool of community funds to pay developers and other people in the community who do things. We're a long way from resolving the processes and structure we use to do that, but I'm confident we can achieve this.
In the end I know the crypto community is dominated by the tech, and ALL of us want to know what that tech will be, what killer features and innovations will we have? ORA isn't like other projects, and I suspect many will lose interest in ORA because we're slow and aren't producing tech innovations yet. That's OK, and this is a big community, and there are many other coins to follow. What ORA does offer though, is a chance to PARTICIPATE, and any developers with ideas are most welcome to contact nio or myself and join us. ORA really is a 'journey' and not a destination, and to many that might be a real turn off, and that's totally cool, but I think to many people that's actually a big positive. We're trying to build a great community that's supporting a great development team, and we've got an open door to all suggestions.